Gujarat ’02: The business of riots

Being in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002 makes you a part of history. On that day, exactly 10 years ago, you were either the hunter or the hunted or a mute spectator to violence of a kind the country hadn’t witnessed since 1984.

Gujarat was yet to come out of the shock of the carnage that took place in Godhra the day before, with 59 kar sevaks burnt alive inside the Sabarmati Express. By February 28 afternoon, Muslim pockets – some of which are now household names like Gulbarg Society and Naroda Patia – were being attacked by riotous mobs. A bandh called by the Sangh Parivar to “protest” the Sabarmati Express carnage turned into a reprisal attack.

The aftershocks kept jolting Gujarat for almost a year, dying down around December 2002, when Narendra Modi was elected the chief minister in a landslide victory.

Today, as many recall those horrific days of 2002, and many entangle themselves in unending debates, opinion on Narendra Modi remains as polarized as the state is.

And, this debate will never end because we never learn to know, funnily, apples from oranges.

Let’s sample a few comments on Gujarat. “Look how it has developed since 2002.” “See, how many industries have come in.” “It’s soon becoming the auto hub of India.”

There is no denying all this. But, can one deny that 10 years ago, people were butchered, burnt alive, raped, maimed even as – what is now clear – the situation could have well been controlled?

Aren’t we mixing apples with oranges? Do good roads and a swanky riverfront wash away the sins of a carnage? Or, are we saying, thank god it happened, or else we wouldn’t have had our industries?

When then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee got into the burnt S 6 coach in Godhra a few days after the riots and then reached a relief camp in Ahmedabad, he spoke of “raj dharma” and how it is imperative for all rulers to follow this.

But, it didn’t take him long to forget his own preaching. A few months later, at a BJP conclave in Goa, when everybody expected Modi’s head to roll, Vajpayee kept silent. Did he believe “raj dharma” meant keeping silent as the state burnt and people killed each other?

So Modi stayed on. Though he probably wasn’t sure how long he could hang onto power, he knew two vital points. One, there has always been simmering anti-Muslim feelings in the state and, two, the Gujaratis’ love for “dhando” (business).

If point one got him the throne (no drawing room conversation is complete in Gujarat without a mention of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ people are willing to kill because “Muslims celebrate when Pakistan beats India in a cricket match” and almost all justified the killings by saying “they had to be taught a lesson”), point number two pasted the halo permanently on him.

Anybody aware of the political situation in Gujarat just before Modi was para-dropped from Delhi in October 2001, would vouch for the fact that BJP was staring at defeat. When a state ravaged by a devastating earthquake (January 26, 2001) that left over 10,000 dead was grappling to find its feet, the Keshubhai Patel government was riddled with corruption charges, from bungling in auction of quake debris to charges of relief material like apples and tents coming from other countries being sold in markets all over Gujarat. BJP’s equity was at a low, and the Congress was waiting to grab power.

All that changed on this day 10 years ago. The BJP rode back to power, high on the saffron wave that swept the state through riot-torn 2002. It has never looked back since, and another election is just round the corner.

Between 2002 and today, roads have been made better, the Sabarmati riverfront is almost throwing a challenge to the Singapore riverfront, one car manufacturer after another have trooped into Sanand, Gujarat’s Motown and top industrialists have dropped in regularly at his bi-yearly do – the Vibrant Gujarat – where some have even dubbed him PM material publicly.

Now, how has all this helped Modi? As a reporter in Gujarat in 2002, I had traveled to a tribal district – Chhota Udepur – close to Vadodara to catch the mood just before the polls. I was walking down a street and was struck by what I saw – rows of burnt down houses with graffiti on soot-covered walls proclaiming exactly how a lesson would be taught to the men and women who lived in these homes if they ever showed the temerity to come back.

I walked up to a tea stall and started a conversation (a routine news gathering technique) when the sentiments began boiling over, more furiously than the tea did.

Author

Raja Bose, resident editor of The Times of India in Chandigarh, has travelled from the land of the Red,Communist, Bengal to the land of Green Revolution, Punjab, with stopovers in Modi's Gujarat and Lalu's Bihar, spending 17 years with his ears to the ground,going on, truly, a journey without maps.

Raja Bose, resident editor of The Times of India in Chandigarh, has travelled from the land of the Red,Communist, Bengal to the land of Green Revolution, Pu. . .